In this blog we ask some of our favourite marketing experts what marketing metrics are often overlooked. This is the forth blog in a series of blogs where we ask marketing leaders for their feedback on a number of questions. This blog will address the question “What marketing metrics should be tracked diligently but are often overlooked?”
 

Here’s what they had to say:

Not necessarily metrics, but two things are are often overlooked are reviews and referrals, as they are crucial to new business. Companies should create both a review and referral program to maximize the benefits. Always ask customers for a review, and have a procedure and process in place – whether it’s an automated email, a quick survey, or request to leave you a review on Google or any review site (and any negative reviews will give you an opportunity to improve your product/service). Same with referrals: have a process in place as customers that come from referrals have a much higher lifetime value compared to non-referred customers. Enable your happiest customers to be an extension of your marketing team.
 
– Robert Clarke, CMO at Sensei Marketing, @robertclarkey
 
The amount of time someone spends on your website should be tracked diligently. While it is great your website is getting traffic, are people really finding your website useful? Are they staying on your site long enough to learn about your business or product? The amount of time someone spends on your website could indicate usability issues or a problem with accessing your other pages. Session times can help you learn more about your conversion rates because if people are interested in learning more about you, session times can provide insight into how quickly they are exiting your pages.
 
– Bianca Sicilia, Marketing Manager VA Partners
 
Sales qualified leads often get overshadowed by marketing qualified leads, probably because MQLs are easier to attract and, in many respects, they’re sexy vanity metrics. It’s one thing to get someone to ask for a demo, a completely different proposition to turn them into a customer.
 
– Mark Evans, Principal at ME Consulting, @markevans
 
I think audience insights are the most important metric to track but they can often be overlooked. One organization may have completely different audiences throughout its communication channels. The people who are tapped into your direct mail campaign may be completely different than those who follow you on Instagram. Your Facebook audience might need a different style of communication entirely from the people who follow you on Twitter. Get as granular as you can in your audience data. Find similarities and glean insights so that you can create the best user/donor/customer experience possible.
 
– Jennifer Paukman, Social Media and Content Specialist at Ramp Communications, @jenniferpaukman
 
I think one metric that is often overlooked in SaaS is time-to-value. For self-service SaaS products, it’s important to understand how your users are using the software, and if they are making it through the onboarding process to get your software set up as intended. If it doesn’t get set up properly, then your user won’t receive value. If it does get set up, but takes a long time to do so, there’s a longer time-to-value. So I think reducing the time-to-value your users experience setting up your software is important. The earlier users receive value, the less likely they are to churn.
 
– Vincent Panepinto, Co-Founder at Spently
 
Engagement rate, on both social media and your website. Most people are caught up in vanity metrics like the number of followers, but what matters most is how engaged your audience is. High engagement rate is correlated to brand loyalty. It’s often better to have a tight knit community rather than having millions of “fans” who don’t interact with your content. Remember, it’s the people who truly love your brand that will spread the word about your products/services to their friends & family.
 
– Sarosha Imtiaz, Co-Founder at Aiva Labs
 
I think measuring the time a user spends on a page is really important. The longer they’re there, the more likely your content is resonating with them: if one of your top pages has an average time of 2 seconds, your page isn’t pulling people in and providing the information they need quickly. Remember, you only have 3 seconds to capture someone’s interest on your website!
 
– Kayla Thomson, Marketing Manager, VA Partners
 
I think on-page engagement metrics are still lacking. Lots of people look at clicks, even more are looking at conversions now which is great, but what about in between that? It would be nice to see more people tracking scroll depth or on-page clicks/interactions with Google Tag Manager and events brought into Google Analytics.
 
– Sourov De, Managing Partner at Stryve Digital Marketing, @Sourovde
 
What do you think? Are there other metrics often overlooked? Please add your feedback in the comments section below.